John Regehr on "Use of Assertions"

[John Carter]

On Sunday, 9 September 2018 at 09:01:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

>> Let's face it, the term "assert" has been poisoned by decades 
>> of ambiguity.
>
> There is really no ambiguity... The terminology is widespread 
> and well understood across the field I think.

Ahh, I so, so wish what you said was true. The endless debates in 
this forum, and many other forums across the 'net and sadly, in 
my own workplace, have firmly convinced me...

* The terminology is indeed widespread.
* and well understood across the field
* to mean subtly different and incompatible things to different 
groups of people.

ie. Yes, everybody knows the words, everybody can read the code, 
everybody can find somebody who agrees with his intent and 
meaning.... but get a large enough group together to try agree on 
what actions, for example, the optimiser should take that are 
implied by that meaning... and flames erupt.

Suddenly you find people don't actually agree on the intent and 
meaning of the code.

Communication is hard, human communication is doubly hard.

I beg humanity to give up on that word "assert" and come up with 
others words and define explicit the intent and meaning and 
implications.

So much pain will be avoided.